Did early modern humans and Neanderthals get it on?

[littlebabyjesus]

The geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer, while not ruling out the possibility that there may have been a tiny amount of hybridisation, says in his book Out of Eden that studies of the genes of non-Africans have not revealed a single mtDNA line (the DNA that is only passed on by mothers, and so can be traced back) that could have come from them. He doesn't rule out the possibility that this is simply by chance and that some Neanderthal DNA (causing, possibly, the beetle-brow) has entered the homo sapiens gene pool, but thinks that if there is any, it must be a very small amount.

Also, the archaeological evidence suggests that, although they both lived in Europe, contact between them was limited. There is evidence, however, that Neanderthals learned some tool skills from early humans.

Oppenheimer makes a very compelling case for a single out-of-Africa migration of fully modern humans around 80,000 years ago, based on careful comparison of archaeological remains, climate reconstructions and DNA evidence taken from people living today. He very politely deconstructs the idea of a multi-regional model of modern human evolution, which relies on the interbreeding of Neanderthals and homo erectus. The more I read about the multi-regional model, the more I suspect its motives, as it attempts to place Europe at the centre of the story of the coming of modern man.

 

[d.a.s.h]

There's some really interesting stuff on this in Gribbin and Cherfas' The First Chimpanzee. There is some speculative stuff in the book (fascinating speculations, though, and a well-argued case), but for anyone interested in human origins, it's a must read for the ground they cover. And their stuff on neoteny is well worth it alone. One to put next to all your Leakeys on the book shelf.

That sounds like a good read, thanks.

 

[strung out]

But the offspring aren't fertile.

female ligers and tigons are fertile, just not males, meaning you can never get a liger or tigon to mate with another liger or tigon. however females can mate with male tigers or lions producing li-ligers or ti-ligers.

 

[david dissadent]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/aug/08/evolution.genetics

This story in the Guardian strongly suggests that sapiens Neanderthal interbreeding was at best very rare. The split would have been about 600 000 years ago and that Neanderthal populations were likely increadibly small, perhaps only 10 000 individuals.

From recollection Neanderthals were not good walkers or traders. The stone tools they tended to use were from pretty local stone formations, while sapiens tools could come from hundreds and even a thousand of miles away by walking or trade giving them very high quality flints.

 

[Dhimmi]

Norwich/Romford/Leicester/Southampton/other

multiple choice regional humour post...

 

[Jonti]

Another endorsement for Oppenheimer's "Out of Eden" from me.

In his own words ...

Our own species, Homo sapiens, was born over 170,000 years ago, out of what was nearly a human extinction in which the total population fell to an estimated 10,000 in a mother of all ice ages. Although Homo sapiens duly made it out of Africa to the Levant at the next interglacial, 120,000 years ago, the genetic evidence indicates that their descendants died out there without issue in the ice age after that. (The Levant - an old-fashioned label, but useful in this context comprises modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan: the Mediterranean Near East minus Egypt.) When modern humans finally spread out of Africa to the rest of the world around 70,000 - 80,000 years ago, Eurasia was still inhabited by several other human species. The European Neanderthals, and possibly the Southeast Asian Homo erectus, persisted until less than 30,000 years ago, but no genetic traces of them remain in living humans.

It seems that the European Neanderthals had descended from Home heidelbergensis. Meanwhile, back in the Africa, heidelbergensis had developed into Home sapiens (people like us). Then, when Homo sapiens successfully spread out from Africa (starting around 75000 years ago and reaching New Zealand just 1000 years ago) the other species of Homo became extinct, leaving no genetic traces in living humans.

So, to answer the OP, no, it seems not

 

[danny la rouge]

female ligers and tigons are fertile, just not males, meaning you can never get a liger or tigon to mate with another liger or tigon. however females can mate with male tigers or lions producing li-ligers or ti-ligers.

OK. Picky.

But you can't have lines of ligers or tigons.

 

[jcsd]

OK. Picky.

But you can't have lines of ligers or tigons.

But you can get lines of Savannah cats which are hybrids of domestic and Serval cats (which aren't even classified as belonmging to the same genus), though earlier generation males are usually infertile.

The problem with classifying species by the fertilty of their offspring is that if you have three groups of closely related animals X, Y and Z, group X might be able to interbreed with group Y and produce fertile offspring and group Y might be able to interebreed with group Z and produce fertile offspring, but group X and Z might not be ale to interbreed.

 

[danny la rouge]

Aye, that's why I acknowledged it wasn't the only definition:

Well, now, strictly speaking, if we go by certain definitions, species are by definition not able to inter breed.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Sorry if the following is a statement of the bleeding obvious, but I think we all forget this sometimes:

The problem with any category like species is that it is a category we impose on the world. The concept 'species' wasn't out there waiting to be discovered. It was invented by us to best fit what we saw around us. It is not wholly surprising when our categories do not exactly match reality.

 

[Jonti]

Steady on. It's a fact that there really are distinct "mating populations" of animals that breed true. That's not something that has been imposed on the data.

I'd guess people had recognised this fact about the world long before the notion of a species was formalised by science; that it was the investigation into the empirical fact there are "distinct mating populations of animals that breed true" that then gave rise to the scientific notion of "species".

Certainly the notion proves surprisingly nuanced and subtle; and granted that when it comes to considering stuff like bacteria (which swap DNA with each other rather readily in the wild) the concept is really stretched. All the same, the species is not just a category we impose on the biological world. There's a sense in which the idea was abstracted from the real.

It ain't all just categories we impose on the world. There is such a thing as reality!

Yeah, I know you know all this. I'm just a tad pedantic and hyper-vigilant about relativism